Two articles posted below chronicling the ‘split up’ between these two. They began working together with Evening Land, and then branched out and created Domaine de la Cote and Sandhi.
As many of you know, Raj has concentrated on his Phelan Farms project and, as the article points out, after he moved up to that area during Covid, the partnership kind of ceased anyways.
Their ‘creative differences’ are pretty clear to say - Sashi is true to being more of an old world, ‘classical’ winemaker, whereas Raj as embraced natural and low intervention wines.
I don’t envision much changing at any of these brands moving forward. Cheers!
No. I invited Raj but he had to bail last minute and had his NA director Darren Palace take his place. We were also joined by Dustin Wilson, the MS from the Somm docs who’s Somm 3 served as inspiration for our dinner.
They have been for quiote some time. And when a DDLC wine is featured in the movie Somm and is considered ‘as good as the best Burgundy’, what do you expect to happen?!?
Also, note that many of these wines should be considered in the same category as the best of the rest of CA - so they may seem ‘high’ because of the relative differences in price between most SBC wines and those of our neighbors north, they are not quality wise . . .
Yep some wonderful examples of cooler climate Santa Rita Hills fruit - in the hands of someone who tends to push things on the lower ABV side, but not always . . .
Try Racines if you look for elegant and restrain Pinot and Chard and don’t wanna touch your DDLC. Personally I prefer Racines just a touch more over Sandhi for Chardonnay, but both make hella good wine.
I don’t want to sidetrack this thread toooo much, but I find red Burgundy to largely be a very expensive game of hit and miss (heavy on the miss), especially when trying younger Burgundy, which I very often find too primary and simple. I liked the DdlC Estate Pinot more than most Burgundys I’ve had (both young and old). Regardless, I’ll keep trying, and I’ll check out Racines as well.
Among the sea of restrained SRH wineries, I can only think of OLG which tries to make high octane wine from SRH fruits. Their vineyards are even more extreme than DDLC yet it was a total fruit bomb when I had it earlier this year.